It was 10pm and I was asleep. I heard a loud noise outside, so I got up to investigate. There was a Police helicopter hovering outside my window. I screamed, as the pilot could see me clearly and I could see him. He waved in apology and moved on. It freaked me out properly. I went downstairs and watched as the house opposite was surrounded by Police, in full riot gear. They knocked down the door and ran in. A few minutes later, a screaming woman was dragged out, followed by three teenaged girls, all screaming and crying. They were all put into a waiting van and driven off. That was just strange and really frightening!!!

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Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit.Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

I do not find is strange scary or dramatic, but for some people, especially from countries where prostitution is illegal, it may be strange to see the window prostitution in my street.

Well, it is technically illegal, but we have lots of prostitutes working in Waikiki. It's not unusual to see a couple hookers working one corner of an intersection and a couple police officers standing on another corner. Personally, I think the US should follow the example of the Netherlands and legalize prostitution for the protection of all parties involved.

Prostitutes don't bother me; at least they have jobs. It's the homeless mentally ill that sleep on the bench at the bus stop and relieve themselves in the landscaping behind the bus stop that bother me. I now have to walk 2 blocks to the next bus stop because I can't stand the stench at the stop nearest me.

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"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."

We bought a house across the street and off a couple of lots from the last empty lot in the development (belonged to the Home Owners' Association - they finally made a decision NOT to build a club house, pool, or other community recreational facility and sold the lot in late fall 2005).

Since then the NEWEST house (by twenty or so years) has been raided and found to be a "hemp" farm (three years ago)..............and had the renters evicted by the sheriff's department (last year).

The focus is off of it right now because another house had the garage blow up and burn down (including the fence) at 5:30 one morning around Halloween.............now everyone drives or walks by that house to see if they've started rebuilding yet (yellow warning tape still up - so it might still be under investigation by either the police, the fire department, or their insurance company).

Third house, less public due to location on the edge of the development - turns out that the owner had quietly enclosed a wooden deck to extend his master bedroom (without getting the appropriate permissions) and then did something to his garage (wide door no longer opens to let cars in & out and the "garage" has doubled in size, taking up about half of what remained of the small back yard after the deck was added to the house). The address of that house shows up as a "church" with a website..........which is NOT allowed in our residential area (no parking except on street - whidh is clogging the cul de sac) and the sewer, power, and water lines aren't set up for the extra..........."load" of an extra twenty or fifty people (or more - depending on how many people are in each of those extra vehicles clogging the street) going to that house in large groups a few times a week.................but that's another issue entirely.

I do not find is strange scary or dramatic, but for some people, especially from countries where prostitution is illegal, it may be strange to see the window prostitution in my street.

Well, it is technically illegal, but we have lots of prostitutes working in Waikiki. It's not unusual to see a couple hookers working one corner of an intersection and a couple police officers standing on another corner. Personally, I think the US should follow the example of the Netherlands and legalize prostitution for the protection of all parties involved.

Prostitutes don't bother me; at least they have jobs. It's the homeless mentally ill that sleep on the bench at the bus stop and relieve themselves in the landscaping behind the bus stop that bother me. I now have to walk 2 blocks to the next bus stop because I can't stand the stench at the stop nearest me.

Just a note, it's not an issue of US law. I believe prostitution is legal in certain counties in the state of Nevada.

I didn't see it, but down the road lived a family. The wife converted from Islam to Christianity, then she disappeared. The husband was distraught. Turns out he had just installed a new concrete patio with unusual foundations. so now their kids have no mother and a father incarcerated.

We just recently had a home invasion in our area in which several men broke into the rural home of a man in his late 70s. Police believe the men must have known the homeowner has cancer, because as soon as they broke in, they bolted up the stairs, to his room, where he keeps his pain meds.

The homeowner heard the men thundering up the stairs, grabbed the pistol he kept beside the bed and fired at the bedroom door. He hit one of them in the shoulder. The other intruders ran away. The injured intruder went downstairs, but apparently changed his mind, because he turned around and went back upstairs! The homeowner shot him again, this time in a far more crucial area, and the intruder is in intensive care.

A reporter asked the homeowner if he was worried about the still at-large intruders coming back again, either to complete their goal or get revenge for their injured friend. He shrugged and said he was prepared either way.

It's scary that people are willing to go to these lengths for a handful of pills.

I can't remember if I posted this, but I tried to go back a little bit and check and didn't see it. So forgive me if it's a double post.

A house in my neighborhood exploded. Apparently somebody was doing some work on the gas main (it's really unclear from the news articles whether it was the grandfather in the family who had either been doing or hired somebody to do this work, or whether it was the gas company), and they hit the house line, or something. Anyway, the house just blew up one morning. It damaged the two neighboring houses a little and there were some other injuries there, but most of the injuries were to the occupants of the house. One of the children was blown out of the house and found on the lawn by neighbors, who, to their credit, came *running* to help, scooped up children (the children were in further danger from fire and continually exploding debris) and directed the ambulance and got the kids sent out as soon as possible. I believe it was three children, a baby, a toddler, and a preschooler, plus their mother and grandfather. I think the father was at work, but I don't remember all the details. As far as I know, there were no immediate deaths, but I don't know if anybody died in the hospital later.

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Emily is 9 years old! 1/07Jenny is 7 years old! 10/08Charlotte is 5 years old! 8/10Megan is 3 years old! 10/12Lydia is 1 year old! 12/14

One windy winter night, the tree on our corner caught fire. It was very old and mostly dead, so old that at one point one of its branches encased one of the power lines the branches were constantly tangled in. The first we knew of it was when our neightbor pounded on our door at one in the morning, and I went outside to watch as smoldering embers were floating out of the top of the trunk and wafting down the street. I watched from across the street as the fire department showed up promptly and started drenching the tree, trunk, ground, and street with water, with very little effect. It was the chief's assessment that the wind had blown the power lines into the branches and a spark had arced to the hollow trunk where the fire had smoldered. After about an hour of splashing water everywhere, the firemen decided to call it quits. The tree was still burning, but the sparks and embers had calmed down quite a bit. The chief said letting it burn out was the only thing to do, and that we should call Baltimore Gas and Electric to remove the tree. As they packed up to leave, I stepped into the street to walk back across to my house. Remember how I said it was winter? And that these firemen had just spent an hour splashing water everywhere? As my foot hit what was now ice, my legs shot out from under me and I hit the street flat on my back. I was wearing my big poofy winter coat and barely had the wind knocked out of me, but fortunately there was an entire truck of firemen twenty feet away who sprang into action ready to help just in case. BG&E did come out to look at the tree the next day, and about a year later someone did come by to cut it down.

The neighbor down the street (busted for drugs on his 18th birthday) once poured gas on the street and lit it (during the night). It made quite a mess and was quite scary. He also threatened me and some friends with a gun (and was high at the time). This was in a nice sleepy town. He was and is a bad apple. I felt bad for his brother though, and we became friends once the brother went to jail.

In my current neighborhood, the biggest scary thing tend to be the bear that wanders around. Or maybe the sound of my dimwit neighbor talking about "fixing" the road (it cost us $800 to put it back last time).

In our nice, suburban/rural neighborhood, one of the houses on the next block exploded. It turned out that these nice, quiet tenants were running a meth lab/pot farm, who fled the scene before police and fire arrived. I don't know if they were ever caught, but the owner had to answer a few questions before being released.

The good thing about it was, after 17 years, we finally got to meet our neighbors.

Have I told you all about Mr. Happy? (And a few other, more minor tales)

When I was in college, the last 2 years, a friend & I shared an apartment in a converted old house a few blocks from 3 different campuses for 2 universities (one of which we were students at), at the intersection of Frat Row and Bar Row. There were a few relatively minor incidents, including a group of drunken students who spied the Nebraska plates on my car and started singing the University of Nebraska fight song.

The building had 3 apartments, 2 accessed from the back of the house, and one from the front, and on the back side, a shed had been built up against the side of the house to hold a coin-op washer & dryer. The roof of the shed came up & over part of my big bedroom window, to just above the window A/C unit. The shed door had a lock, but the whole shed was a bit rickety. We eventually discovered (I don't recall how) that the reason our apartment also had a security system was because the parents of the girls who'd lived there previously had paid for it after some idiot got into the shed & pulled out the A/C unit to break into the apartment. Lovely!

There was also a second, small window high in the wall of my bedroom, just above a section of porch roofing or some such. (This comes into play later).

One day, my friend went to get her laundry from the machines and discovered her undies were AWOL. Next day, walking down the street along Bar Row, she found a bunch of them strewn in the bushes. She started collecting them until she thought about it, realized there was no way she'd ever wear them again, and tossed them in the trash.

The biggest incident, however, happened one summer when we were both taking classes and I was working part-time in a gift shop of a pub. We get home about midnight or so on a weeknight, and being hungry, call the late-night pizza delivery joint. Pizza comes, we eat, all is well. My friend decides that, since it's really hot and her room doesn't have an A/C unit, she's going to sleep on the papasan couch in the living room (which does have A/C). Just after she says this, there's a knock on the door. Thinking it must be the pizza guy (maybe he lost something & is retracing his steps?), I get up and go peek out the door.

Roomie suddenly sees me FLY across the room, grab the phone, and start dialing 911. "I'm at 1234 Address Street and there's some guy jacking off on my front porch!!" Yep! When I peeked out the window, I caught a glimpse of a guy with a crudmonkey-eating grin and making a very distinctive motion with his hand. Cops arrive, look around the premises, but of course the guy is long gone. We pulled the cushion from the couch to the hallway outside my room, and slept with the phone on the floor between the cushion and my bed.

Exactly one week later, we'd just gotten home late at night, roomie's in the loo (accessible only via my room), and I'm sitting on my bed, waiting my turn. Roomie hears a knocking noise, and says "What?" I ask what she wants, having not heard the noise. Noise repeats, and this time we both hear it. I look up at the small, high window, and see a big grin and we hear the guy climb down from his perch. Cue me, flying for the phone again. The cops arrived in record time - turns out it was the same ones who'd responded the previous week, and in fact had just driven past our house and had slowed down to look for suspicious activity. Alas, Mr. Happy's perch was not easily seen from the street. Also, by the fact that we heard him climbing down, we're guessing he'd been up there waiting for us to get home! Of course, he was gone by the time the cops arrived, and we never did find out who he was. Thankfully, to our knowledge, he never came back.

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What part of v_e = \sqrt{\frac{2GM}{r}} don't you understand? It's only rocket science!

"The problem with re-examining your brilliant ideas is that more often than not, you discover they are the intellectual equivalent of saying, 'Hold my beer and watch this!'" - Cindy Couture

Our mailman was one heck of a nice guy. He'd even bend the rules so you didn't have to be home to receive mail for which you would otherwise have to sign. Just leave the slip in the mailbox and he'd leave your letter.

Nice Mr. Postman became enamored of Ms. Postal Carrier on the next route a few blocks over. They dated and then she left him. He became obsessed with her, to the extent of losing his job. His son lived on her route, so he sent his son a registered letter, then let himself into his son's house with a stolen key.

When she went to deliver the letter, he came out and shot her to death.

In my current neighborhood, someone called for a pizza to be delivered at the house across the street(no, they didn't live there they used a cell phone.) When the pizza guy came they robbed him, right at the end of my driveway!